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The Beat Feature

Born with single kidney, Wilmington players battle on

Written: Oct 09, 2009
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By TODD KRISE

t_krise@ncnewsonline.com

Forgive Darlene Palladino.

It’s not her fault.

She’s the one who didn’t want her son to play football.

Yet, she’s the one being tortured every Friday night.

Chad Palladino was born with only one kidney.

So every time the Wilmington High senior takes the field, his mom cringes and hides her face.

“I’m the big worrywart over it,” the mother of three said. “My husband and the boys are always making fun of me.”

Darlene isn’t laughing because she knows the right hit in the wrong place could send her youngest son to the hospital.

It’s the same scenario Tami Wilson deals with on a weekly basis.

Her son, Bryce, also a senior, has one kidney as well.

Palladino and Wilson are a rarity in the football world. Every time they strap on their shoulder pads, they’re defying the odds.

“To be honest with you,” Darlene Palladino said, “when this season is over, it’s going to be a big relief. I hope he doesn’t get into anything as intense as football again.”

For now, both mothers will have to ride out the remainder of the 2009 season on the edge of their seats.

The Greyhounds are once again in thick of a playoff hunt. They currently sit at third place in the District 10, Region 3 standings.

Chad Palladino and Bryce Wilson are major reasons for Wilmington’s success.

Palladino is a running back, wide receiver and linebacker, while Wilson is the Greyhounds’ placekicker.

Each wears protective padding around their midsections to prevent serious hits to the kidney area. Both players realize the danger, but to thwart that anxiety, they use an unlikely weapon.

“Little jokes,” Palladino said. “Anytime we get hit, we will come over to each other and say, ‘You all right?’ ”

“We’ll say, ‘Don’t die on me,’ ” Wilson said. “Stuff like that.”

Palladino, who has the right kidney, and Wilson, who has the left, became good friends in junior high after discovering their odd similarity. The two also had the same Pittsburgh doctor growing up.

Unlike Palladino, Wilson had surgery to incapacitate his dormant right kidney because he constantly got sick as a 6-year-old.

“That was a really trying three or four months,” Wilson’s father, Ron, said. “He’d get better then he would get deathly sick. He went to the hospital five or six times.”

Since surgery, Wilson has had no conflict with his lone kidney and neither has Palladino.

Both players take extreme caution in what they eat and drink. They always have a water bottle with them for hydration.

“They wanted to play and that’s a tribute to them,” Wilmington coach Terry Verrelli said. “I’m not going to hold them back because I know they have something abnormal.

“We don’t think about it at all because they don’t want to. They want to play the game.”

Each set of parents has taken solace in their family doctor’s words. Palladino and Wilson are just as likely to get hurt riding a bicycle or jumping on a trampoline, the doctor explained.

“Which we have both of them,” Ron Wilson said.

Another coping mechanism is group therapy. The Palladinos and Wilsons have become close friends through their sons’ connection.

“I just think it’s funny that there is another family like us,” Darlene Palladino said. “It’s so weird that they’re both in the same class. It was meant to be, I guess.”

She went on to explain that her entire family (husband, Keith, and two other sons, Jared and Brandon) has been tested and all four of them have two kidneys apiece.

You know, in case Chad ever needs one in the future.

“We always knew that there’s a potential that Chad might need one of ours, so at least we all have one of ours to give him,” Darlene said. “He can always have mine if he needs it.”

See ... it isn’t her fault.
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